The System

What Is the Metacognitive Moves System?

A coordinated learning practice system for colleges.

Every day, faculty, advisors, tutors, coaches, and other student support professionals help students learn. They ask questions, provide feedback, solve problems, encourage reflection, and help students navigate academic challenges. Every interaction has the opportunity to strengthen not only what students learn, but how they learn.

The Metacognitive Moves System™ (MMS) provides a coordinated way to support that work.

MMS is a coordinated learning practice system that helps colleges intentionally strengthen how learning is understood, supported, and developed across people, programs, and learning environments. It brings together a Learning Practice Framework, a Learning Practice Architecture, a shared language, practical tools and resources, and Learning Practice Programs into one coordinated approach for strengthening learning practice.

Learning Practice

Learning Is More Than Completing Academic Work

Students write papers, solve problems, conduct research, participate in discussions, complete projects, prepare for exams, receive feedback, and reflect on their experiences.

Those activities matter.

Every academic task also requires students to decide how they will approach the work.

They establish goals. They select strategies. They organize time and effort. They monitor understanding. They interpret challenges. They adjust their approach. They reflect on what happened. They carry learning forward into future situations.

These actions shape learning every bit as much as the assignment itself.

We call these learning practices.

The Metacognitive Moves System is a coordinated learning practice system. It is designed to help colleges recognize, organize, support, and strengthen learning practices consistently across the institution.

Read The Invisible Practices That Shape Learning for a deeper examination of why the practices students rely on can remain hidden beneath academic work—and what becomes possible when those practices are made visible.

Why It Exists

Why MMS Exists

Metacognition is often introduced as "thinking about your thinking." That shorthand offers a useful starting point, but it does not fully capture how metacognition operates.

The central shift is from awareness to self-regulation. Learners do more than notice their thinking. They use what they notice to change strategies, respond to problems, evaluate results, learn from experience, and carry that learning into future situations.

That kind of adaptive regulation is what colleges are working to support in every student—the challenge is doing so consistently across an entire institution.

Higher education has benefited from decades of research on metacognition, self-regulated learning, reflection, feedback, transfer, motivation, and other processes that influence learning and performance. Applying that knowledge consistently across an institution remains a different challenge.

Students learn throughout the college experience. They move between classrooms, tutoring centers, advising appointments, coaching conversations, career services, student employment, first-year experiences, and experiential learning opportunities.

Every setting contributes to learning, often using different language, different approaches, and different assumptions about how learning develops.

MMS connects those experiences through a shared approach to learning practice. It helps colleges create greater consistency while allowing faculty, advisors, tutors, coaches, and other professionals to support students in ways that fit their unique roles and expertise.

The Central Idea

The Central Idea Behind the Metacognitive Moves System

The Metacognitive Moves System brings the practices that shape learning into one coordinated system.

It gives colleges a shared way to understand, organize, support, implement, and strengthen learning practice across people, programs, and educational environments.

The Metacognitive Moves System is not simply a framework.
It is not simply a collection of tools.
It is not a workshop series.
It is not a professional development curriculum.
It is a coordinated learning practice system.

Every part of the Metacognitive Moves System contributes to that purpose.

For a deeper examination of the learning-science foundation behind the system, read Beyond Experiential Learning: Why Higher Education Needs a Metacognitive Model of Learning Practice .

How the System Works

The Structure of the Metacognitive Moves System

The Metacognitive Moves System is organized so each part serves a distinct purpose while contributing to a common goal: helping colleges strengthen learning practice consistently across people, programs, and learning environments.

The Metacognitive Moves System brings together a Learning Practice Framework, a Learning Practice Architecture, a shared language, practical tools and resources, and Learning Practice Programs into one coordinated approach for strengthening learning practice. Learning Practice Programs are the means through which colleges implement the system, bringing the other four components into everyday practice.

Conceptual Foundation

Learning Practice Framework

The Learning Practice Framework identifies, defines, and organizes the learning practices that shape how students approach academic work. It provides the conceptual foundation for the Metacognitive Moves System and gives colleges a shared way to understand the learning practices they are helping students develop.

The Learning Practice Framework organizes those actions into eight interconnected learning practices that describe how learners approach academic work before, during, and after learning.

Set Goals

Direction, Motivation & Commitment · Task Framing

Define meaningful aims and clear targets for success by identifying expectations, requirements, and what successful performance looks like.

Plan

Strategy, Approach & Selection · Strategy Selection

Identify and select the strategies best suited to the task—choosing deliberately among alternatives rather than defaulting to habit or comfort.

Organize

Time, Effort & Resources · Resource Allocation

Distribute time, attention, and effort across competing academic demands—prioritizing high-value work rather than spreading effort by habit.

Monitor

Progress, Awareness & Detection · Monitoring

Track progress and understanding while work is underway and detect when the current approach may not be working—before performance breaks down.

Interpret

Cause, Source & Explanation · Interpretation

Identify the specific source of a detected problem—distinguishing effort issues from strategy issues and symptoms from causes—so the response that follows is targeted rather than generic.

Adjust

Change, Improvement & Next Moves · Adjustment

Use what was learned through interpretation to modify strategy, effort, or approach in response to the specific issue identified—not simply the fact that something went wrong.

Reflect

Experiences, Learning & Insight · Evaluation

Assess both outcomes and process after the work is complete—generating specific, actionable insight rather than a general sense of how it went.

Carry Forward

Portability, Adaptation & Application · Transfer

Recognize when learning from one context applies to another and adapt—rather than mechanically repeat—prior strategies and insight in new situations.

For a deeper examination of why metacognitive design must identify the specific capability learners are developing, read Before We Design for Metacognition, We Need to Define What We Are Developing .

System Organization

Learning Practice Architecture

The Learning Practice Architecture provides the structural blueprint for the Metacognitive Moves System. The Learning Practice Framework identifies and defines the learning practices; the architecture explains how those practices function together as one coordinated system.

Before an Experience

Goals and plans shape action

Goal setting, planning, and organization establish direction, strategy, and the allocation of time, effort, and resources.

During an Experience

Monitoring informs adjustment

Monitoring generates information, interpretation explains what that information means, and adjustment changes strategy, effort, or approach.

After an Experience

Reflection supports transfer

Reflection evaluates outcomes and process, while carry forward supports the adaptation of learning to future situations.

This structure reflects the reality that learning rarely follows a rigid sequence.

Learners move among the practices as tasks, conditions, and challenges change: monitoring may trigger renewed planning, reflection may reveal that a task was framed incorrectly, and learning carried forward from one experience may shape goals and strategies in the next.

The architecture provides the structural model that guides conversations, tool development, professional learning, and implementation throughout MMS. Each part of the system reinforces the same underlying organization of learning practice.

Institutional Consistency

Shared Language

A shared language gives faculty, advisors, tutors, coaches, and other learning practitioners common ways to recognize, discuss, and reinforce learning practice. It creates a common foundation for conversations about learning across the institution.

Students encounter consistent ideas across courses, programs, and support services because the people working with them share an understanding of the learning practices being developed. Individual interactions can build upon one another instead of beginning again with different terminology and assumptions.

Shared language also makes important aspects of learning easier to recognize and discuss. Learning processes that once remained implicit or difficult to describe become visible, giving practitioners common ways to identify patterns, explain challenges, reinforce effective practices, and help students understand what they are experiencing as learners. Once learning practices can be named, they become easier to recognize, discuss, teach, and strengthen.

Shared language does not require every practitioner to perform the same role or use the same methods. It gives people a common structure they can apply within the responsibilities, relationships, and learning environments specific to their work.

Everyday Application

Practical Tools and Resources

The Metacognitive Moves System includes learner-facing tools, practitioner resources, and implementation supports that bring the Learning Practice Framework, Learning Practice Architecture, and shared language into everyday educational practice.

Learner-facing tools give students structured ways to set goals, plan, organize, monitor, interpret, adjust, reflect, communicate, and carry learning forward during authentic academic, career, and life experiences. They help students participate more intentionally in their own learning rather than simply completing academic tasks.

Practitioner resources help faculty, advisors, tutors, coaches, and other professionals make learning practices visible, ask more purposeful questions, guide reflection, and support students in making informed changes to how they approach their work. They provide practical ways to reinforce learning practices consistently without requiring practitioners to change their roles or responsibilities.

Implementation supports help colleges use the tools and resources consistently across roles and settings. They make it possible to move beyond isolated adoption toward coordinated implementation across the institution.

Implementation

How Colleges Implement MMS

Colleges implement the Metacognitive Moves System through Learning Practice Programs.

Each Learning Practice Program develops a specific area of learning practice while implementing that portion of the Metacognitive Moves System. Every program builds on the same Learning Practice Framework, Learning Practice Architecture, shared language, and practical approach.

Colleges can begin with the area that best aligns with their current priorities and expand implementation over time without introducing disconnected initiatives.

Professional Learning Experience

An interactive experience that develops practitioner capability and shared approaches.

Learner-Facing Tools

Designed for use within authentic academic work, helping students make learning practices visible while learning is taking place.

Student Hub

A dedicated space where students access program tools, resources, and guidance.

Staff Hub

A practitioner workspace containing facilitation resources, implementation guidance, and practical supports.

Facilitator and Participant Resources

Conversation guides, activities, templates, and materials that support intentional use.

Licensed Access and Updates

Continued access, updates, and renewal options throughout the subscription period.

Explore Learning Practice Programs →

The Outcome

What Coordinated Learning Practice Makes Possible

The Metacognitive Moves System is designed to grow with the institution. Most colleges begin with the Learning Practice Program that best aligns with their current priorities, then extend the same framework, architecture, shared language, and practical approach into new areas of learning practice.

Greater Visibility

Learning practice becomes easier to recognize, discuss, and strengthen across the people and places that support students.

Stronger Continuity

Students encounter shared approaches across classrooms, advising, tutoring, coaching, and other learning environments.

Institutional Capability

Faculty, advisors, tutors, coaches, and other practitioners reinforce one another’s work because they are building on the same system.

Over time, colleges develop more than individual programs or collections of tools. They build a coordinated approach to learning practice and greater capability to support learning intentionally and consistently throughout the college experience. As implementation expands, institutions also strengthen their Learning Practice Infrastructure (LPI) —the shared frameworks, language, tools, and professional learning that make coordinated learning practice possible.

Begin Building the Metacognitive Moves System

Every college starts somewhere.

The first step is choosing the Learning Practice Program that best aligns with your institution's current priorities. Each program strengthens specific areas of learning practice while expanding the same coordinated system across your college.

Explore Learning Practice Programs →Book a Consultation